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Are you planning on a natural looking planted tank with rocks and driftwood?

Are you looking for huge variety of fish? Bigger Fish? or lots of smaller fish?

I am such a big fan of Cyprinidae Barbinae (barbs) I always recommend large schools of barbs. You could do some really impressive stocking with a mix of Tiger barbs, Odessa Barbs, Golden Barbs, Cherry Barbs, Denisons Barbs, Then do some Rainbow Sharks and Cory Cats in the bottom with a few exotic plecos, and up the schools of fish to the 20s and 30s and you could have a relaly impressive community tank.

I want to do a natural looking tank. I have never done live plants, but have always wanted to. I have a 400w MH light with a couple PC lights as well. Filtering right now is in the sump through several layers of filter pads - carbon, poly, etc.. Right now I am working on refinishing the cabinet to match my office a little better.

I honestly haven't looked much at the filtration yet. I wanted to decide on fish and plants and build the filtration to fit. The carbon filter pad was part of the original setup and the guy at my LFS told me it was the most helpful. Is it a bad idea?